I don’t know what to say to that at all. So instead, I flee into his kitchen and start searching the cupboards for pots and pans to make dinner. I turn on the oven, and put some water on to boil, hoping that having something to do will make me just the tiniest bit less focused on how humiliated I am. While the oven’s heating up, I make some garlic butter for the bread. After making scores in the French loaf, I slide the butter between the slices, then put the whole thing on a sheet of aluminum foil that I’m surprised to find in a drawer.
I’ve just dumped the sauce into the pan to heat up and am getting out a cutting board to chop some vegetables when Gunner wanders in. He sets his empty beer bottle and goes to the refrigerator to grab another. “You want one?” he asks me.
“Sure,” I mumble. God, anything to take the edge off how nervous I feel around him right now.
He pops the cap off a bottle for me and sets it down next to the cutting board. “Here you go,” he says. Then, instead of going back out into the living room, he pulls up a stool to sit down at the kitchen island. I stifle a groan and start cutting.
“What are we having?” he asks in an amused tone.
“Spaghetti,” I reply.
“My favorite.”
I glance up at him sharply, certain he’s making fun of me.
“What?” he asks innocently, spreading his hands. “I mean it. I fucking like spaghetti.”
“Good,” I say uncertainly. “There’s garlic bread, too.”
“Even better.” He takes a swig of his drink and sets it down. “Can I help?”
I actually start laughing as I try to imagine him chopping veggies. Even him being in a kitchen at all is hard enough to picture — and he’s right here so I don’t even have to try. “No, that’s okay. There’s not that much to do.” I hold up a small container. “You like mushrooms?”
“I like everything,” he replies, raising a brow.
Now that he’s seen me naked, practically everything out of his mouth sounds like a sexual innuendo. I force myself to ignore that and start chopping.
“Your knife’s dull,” I say after a few seconds. “You should sharpen it.”
“Yeah, well I don’t cook much.” He shrugs. “Doesn’t get much use.” He takes another drink, and thankfully decides to make a stab at a normal conversation. “You have a good day?”
I risk a glance at him. “It was okay. Other than going shopping and…” And taking a shower… “Other than going shopping,” I continue, reddening, “I didn’t do a whole lot.”
“Any news about your sister?”
“No.” My throat gets a lump in it, and I pick up my bottle of beer and take a drink to clear it. “I’ve been texting her and calling for days, but no answer. It doesn’t even look like her phone is on.”
Gunner frowns at me. “So… do you even think she wants to be found?”
I sigh deeply. “I don’t know. Honestly, probably not. But I just need to know she’s safe. Once I know that for sure, I’ll leave her alone if she wants me to.”
He’s silent for a moment. “What exactly did that fucker Gonzalo tell you at the bar last night? About where your sister is?”
I shrug. “Like I told you before. He said he and Eden broke up. And she left town. He said he hadn’t seen her since.”
“And do you believe him?”
“I don’t know what to believe.” Lifting up the small cutting board, I push the chopped mushrooms into the spaghetti sauce that’s simmering in a pan on the stove. “Gonzalo lies like he breathes,” I tell him. “Even when he and Eden were together in Lynchburg, he was always lying to her. Disappearing and not telling her where he was. Saying he was out with the guys, and then she’d find out later that a friend saw him at a bar with some girl. He was always borrowing money from her, saying he’d pay her back, but he never would.” I shrug. “So anything he says is probably bullshit. But he’s all I have to go on. And he says she’s gone.”
For a few minutes, Gunner lets me work in silence. I risk a couple of glances at him; he looks deep in thought. I boil spaghetti, grate parmesan, and get out some plates for us. I figure we’ll eat here at the kitchen island, since it’s not exactly a fancy dinner. When the food’s ready, I hand Gunner his plate and some silverware, then rinse the pasta and let him serve himself.
We concentrate on eating for a while. Gunner pulls off a few slices of the garlic bread and stuffs a piece in his mouth. “This is fucking good,” he growls.
I have to laugh. “It’s literally just garlic salt and butter. But thanks.” It is good, actually. Sometimes the simplest meals are the best. It feels oddly therapeutic to just sit down and share a home-cooked meal with someone. I haven’t done this in forever. Not since before Mom got sick. A pang of grief hits, me, and I try to ignore it. If I let myself wallow in every sad memory and regret lurking just below the surface, I’d never manage to do anything else.
“So,” Gunner says then. “What’s your plan for tomorrow?”
Thinking he’s trying to find a roundabout way to ask when I’m leaving, I rush to reassure him. “Oh, I promise to be out of your hair. I’ll probably just drive back to the bar one last time and hope Eden shows up. If not, I guess I’ll drive back to Lynchburg and accept defeat.”
There’s no way I’m going to give up that easily, of course. But Gunner doesn’t need to know that.
“Like hell you will,” he barks, as though reading my mind. “You’re going to stay here looking for her no matter what. I didn’t believe you the first time you tried to feed me that horseshit line, and I don’t believe you now. So you might as well admit it now, and let me help you.”
“But…” I stammer in frustration, “I’ve told you before, I don’t know how you can help me, Gunner. Even if you wanted to. I know literally nothing more than I’ve told you. My sister’s disappeared without a trace, and as far as I can tell, she doesn’t want to be found. The only hope I have of finding her is if I manage to just run into her somehow, by luck.” I shake my head. “And you can’t even do that. You don’t even know what Eden looks like. You wouldn’t know her if you passed by her in the street.” Despair threatens to overwhelm me. “Plus, you beat up Gonzalo, so he knows who you are now. Even if you went back to the bar looking for him, he’ll never talk to you.”
“That son of a bitch had it coming,” he begins to protest, but I stop him.
“I know,” I nod. “And I appreciate it, Gunner. I really do. God knows what he would have done to me if you hadn’t stopped him from…” I can’t quite bear to finish the sentence. “But even so, be honest. What more can you do to help than you’ve done already, by getting me away from him and letting me spend the night here?”
“Plenty,” he says, a determined look in his eye. “Believe me. But if you want my help — and darlin’, trust me when I say you need it — you’re gonna have to answer some questions and tell me everything I want to know.”
10
Gunner
“Maybe I should just give up and go back home,” Alix mutters gloomily.
“Come on, darlin’. Don’t give up yet. Just tell me more about why your sister left.”
We’re sitting on opposite ends of my couch after dinner. The house still smells like garlic bread. I’m on my third beer, and Alix is still nursing her second.
I’m still not quite sure why the fuck I’m trying to help her find her sister. She’s probably right that Eden has no intention of being found. Still, the broken look in Alix’s eyes makes me determined to at least help her get some answers. Even if they end up not being the ones she wants to hear.
“I don’t know, exactly,” she admits. “I mean, I guess it was just the combination of a lot of stuff. I think maybe all of it ended up being too much for her, so she decided to run away from it.” Alix’s face turns sad. “Maybe she thought if she could go somewhere new — get a fresh start — all the problems would just go away.”
“What kind of problems?” I ask.
Alix heaves a de
ep sigh, then launches into her story.
“Eden’s my older sister, by two years,” she begins. “It was just the three of us — Eden, me, and my mom — growing up. My dad lives somewhere out in California, but I’ve only met him like twice, when I was little. Mom and Eden never got along very well, starting at least from when she was a young teenager. We didn’t have very much money, for as long as I can remember. My dad didn’t pay child support, and my mom figured it would cost more money and time than she had to try to force the courts to get him to do it. So she just left it alone. Mom had to work two jobs for pretty much my whole life, to keep a roof over our heads.”
Alix pauses for a moment, then continues, more softly now. “The two of us girls were mostly left to fend for ourselves when Mom was at work. Since Eden was older, she was in charge of making sure both of us were safe. I guess Mom must have felt guilty that she couldn’t keep an eye on us more, because when she did come home, she’d ask us all these questions about exactly what we did while she was gone. She’d grill us about whether we’d left the house, which we weren’t supposed to do. If we’d done our homework. Whether we’d opened the door to any strangers. Whether we’d finished the laundry. Stuff like that.
“Eventually, around the time Eden was about thirteen, she started leaving me home by myself when my mom was working her shifts. She’d swear me to secrecy, and tell me she’d beat me up if I didn’t lie and say she’d been there the whole time. It didn’t take Mom long enough to start getting suspicious that Eden was sneaking out, though. I’m not sure how she figured it out. I never told on her. But even so, I think Eden was convinced that I did.
“By the time Eden was sixteen or seventeen, she and my mom were at each other’s throats a lot of the time. And Eden and I had grown apart. She thought I took Mom’s side all the time, even though I tried my best to stay out of it.” Alex takes a deep breath, then lets it out. “Eventually, Eden graduated from high school. Surprisingly, her grades ended up being really good.” She laughs softly. “Do you know, the whole time, she was making the honor roll, and she never once told my mom? It’s like she didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of knowing there was a smart, responsible girl under all that show of bullshit.”
Alix looks so fucking sad, remembering all of this. I almost feel bad for making her tell me, but knowing all this might end up helping me figure out how to find her sister. “What happened then?” I ask.
“For all her complaining about the rules at Mom’s house, she didn’t move out right away. I was amazed. I thought she’d bolt out of there like a bat out of hell on her eighteenth birthday. But she stayed around.” Alix takes a sip of her beer. “She got a part-time job as a receptionist at a salon. Mom made her start contributing a little money toward rent and food. Which was only fair, of course. I was sixteen by then, and I got a job waitressing at a pizza place. For a little while, the financial situation actually eased up a little bit. With the three of us pitching in, we even had a little extra for each of us to have pocket money. Eden and my mom still fought like cats and dogs, but the stress was a little less bad.
“Then, my mom got sick.”
Oh, fuck. Alix already told me her mom is dead. I think I know where this story is going.
“The kind of brain cancer she had is called glioblastoma.” Alix’s voice has gone oddly flat, like she’s trying hard not to let any emotion show. “At first, we didn’t know anything serious was wrong. She’d been having headaches, and sometimes she seemed kind of foggy after a long day at work. But Mom just chalked it up to being tired. She worked such long hours, after all. She said she wasn’t getting any younger, and she just didn’t have the energy she used to.
“Eventually, the headaches got worse, and more frequent. To the point where she started having double vision sometimes. She told us they were just migraines, even though she’d never had one before. Sometimes she seemed kind of… confused. Like she wasn’t able to think straight. She’d try to hide it from us, but we still noticed. When I tried to talk to her about it, she’d brush me off, or get angry and tell me she just needed to rest.
“Of course,” Alix continues, her voice turning bitter, “Mom didn’t have health insurance. None of us did. We couldn’t afford it. So she avoided going to the doctor for a really long time.” She shakes her head and snorts softly. “Not that it would have done any good, anyway. Glioblastomas basically aren’t curable. They’re really aggressive, and they even make their own blood supply. By the time they grow enough to start causing symptoms, it’s too late. They’ve invaded the brain tissue enough that the best thing you can hope for is to slow it down.
“Mom refused treatment, saying it made no sense to fight something that would just end up taking her in the end, anyway. She said…” her voice breaks. “She said it was a waste of money.”
Alix closes her eyes for a long moment. I want to pull her into my arms but I don’t, instinctively knowing she’d pull away. When she opens her eyes again, they’re shining with unshed tears.
“Around that time is when Eden started hooking up with Gonzalo.” Alix looks at me, disgust evident on her face. “Those last months, when I was doing my damnedest to take care of Mom at home, Eden basically went AWOL. She moved out, and hardly ever came to see us.” Her voice turns angry and hard. “At least she came to Mom’s funeral,” she spits out. “I guess I should be grateful for that, huh?”
“Alix…” I begin. “You don’t have to…”
“I don’t even know why I’m looking for her, at this point,” Alix interrupts me. There’s an edge to her tone now, sharp and cutting as glass. “God, it’s obvious she wants nothing to do with us, isn’t it? With me?” She looks hurt, and bewildered, like she can hardly believe what she’s doing. “Why the hell am I worried about her?” she asks me, her eyes pleading. “When she obviously doesn’t give a damn about me, or about keeping together what’s left of our family?”
Fuck. Alix’s face is a picture of pure suffering. I don’t know what to do or say. I’m a joker. A fighter. Not a goddamn counselor.
But she needs something. She’s told me all this — revealed more than I ever thought she would to me. And even though I can’t know for sure, I doubt she’s ever said it to anyone else.
I owe her some kind of a response.
And so I try.
“You’re worried about her because she’s your sister,” I tell her. “Plus, it kinda sounds like she’s running from shit she can’t face, right into a shitshow she can’t control.” I shake my head. “That Gonzalo fuck is a goddamn pussy, but he’s bad news. You’re right to be worried about her.”
I think back again to how he roofied Alix, and a wall of pure rage builds up inside me so strong it feels almost like it’s going to burst right out of me. I know damn well what that piece of shit was trying to do to her. And if I hadn’t been there, he would have gotten away with it. God damn it. I can’t believe I didn’t beat him to death right then and there. My fist clenches so tight my knuckle crack.
If I ever see Gonzalo again, I won’t let the opportunity slide a second time.
“I know he is,” she whispers. “And I’m scared I won’t be able to find her, and get him away from her. And then what if she gets hurt, and I never even know?”
The way she looks at me — not wary or sarcastic, but open and trusting — it fucking undoes me. Her eyes turn up to me, soft and wet and vulnerable. When they lock onto mine, something shifts. Her pupils get large, and dark. Her lips part, just a little bit, and her breathing speeds up, rasping a little in her throat. Somehow, while she’s been confiding in me, she’s dropped her defenses. Her body’s turning toward mine, willing and ready.
I stay far the fuck away from any entanglements with women. I’ve got more than enough shit to deal with in my life as it is.
Last night, I thought I was just afflicted with a rare case of Mr. Good-fucking-Samaritan when I dragged her ass out of that bar and onto my bike. This morning, I didn’t know what the fuck I was
trying to prove by letting her come stay at my place.
I told myself it didn’t matter if she’s sexy as hell. I’m not a goddamn animal. I can get my needs satisfied anywhere I want. I don’t have a thing for damsels in distress.
But it turns out, I was wrong. Somehow, Alix Cousins has dug her hooks into me. Deep. And fuck, I haven’t even kissed her.
But that’s gonna change. Right goddamn now.
11
Alix
Ever since he surprised me after the shower and I lost my towel, I’ve been feeling hyper-aware of Gunner’s physical presence. There’s this… heat to him, that practically radiates off of his body whenever he’s anywhere in the vicinity. It’s like he sends out these sexual waves or something. It’s incredibly distracting.
During dinner, it wasn’t so bad, because at least there was a kitchen island between us. After we ate, I made sure to scoot as far to one end of the couch as possible, to keep a comfortable distance away from him. But somehow, as he coaxed me into telling him more about Eden, I guess I somehow started moving closer? Or he did? But whatever happened, before I realize it, I look up at him and he’s right there. His eyes are deep blue. Penetrating. They stare into mine for a few moments, then dip down to look at my lips, which I realize I’m biting in… anticipation.
My whole body goes rigid. I’m frozen in my spot. Because I know if he makes the slightest move toward me, I’m completely lost. I’ll let him kiss me. I’ll let him do anything to me.
God, I want him to do… everything to me. So badly…
Way back in a corner of my mind, there’s a tiny voice that’s pleading with me to resist, to move, to do something to break the spell. But that voice is drowned out by the louder one — the one that’s hammering in my ears, begging him so hard to touch me that for a horrible moment, I think I’m actually yelling it out loud.
GUNNER: Lords of Carnage MC Page 6